(a)Cable. All cable communications providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that:

(3) Potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5); or

(4) Potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in paragraph (e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility, and they shall convey to that person all available information that may be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the effects of the outage on callers to that facility. (DS3 minutes and user minutes are defined in paragraphs (d) and (e) of § 4.7.) Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically an Initial Communications Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.

(b)IXC or LEC tandem facilities. In the case of IXC or LEC tandem facilities, providers must, if technically possible, use real-time blocked calls to determine whether criteria for reporting an outage have been reached. Providers must report IXC and LEC tandem outages of at least 30 minutes duration in which at least 90,000 calls are blocked or at least 1,350 DS3-minutes are lost. For interoffice facilities which handle traffic in both directions and for which blocked call information is available in one direction only, the total number of blocked calls shall be estimated as twice the number of blocked calls determined for the available direction. Providers may use historic carried call load data for the same day(s) of the week and the same time(s) of day as the outage, and for a time interval not older than 90 days preceding the onset of the outage, to estimate blocked calls whenever it is not possible to obtain real-time blocked call counts. When using historic data, providers must report incidents where at least 30,000 calls would have been carried during a time interval with the same duration of the outage. (DS3 minutes are defined in paragraph (d) of § 4.7.) In situations where, for whatever reason, real-time and historic carried call load data are unavailable to the provider, even after a detailed investigation, the provider must determine the carried call load based on data obtained in the time interval between the onset of the outage and the due date for the final report; this data must cover the same day of the week, the same time of day, and the same duration as the outage. Justification that such data accurately estimates the traffic that would have been carried at the time of the outage had the outage not occurred must be available on request. If carried call load data cannot be obtained through any of the methods described, for whatever reason, then the provider shall report the outage.

(c)Satellite.

(1) All satellite operators shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, of an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that manifests itself as a failure of any of the following key system elements: One or more satellite transponders, satellite beams, inter-satellite links, or entire satellites. In addition, all Mobile-Satellite Service (“MSS”) satellite operators shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, of an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that manifests itself as a failure of any gateway earth station, except in the case where other earth stations at the gateway location are used to continue gateway operations within 30 minutes of the onset of the failure.

(2) All satellite communications providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that manifests itself as:

(i) A loss of complete accessibility to at least one satellite or transponder;

(ii) A loss of a satellite communications link that potentially affects at least 900,000 user-minutes (as defined in § 4.7(d)) of either telephony service or paging service;

(iii) Potentially affecting any special offices and facilities (in accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5) other than airports; or

(iv) Potentially affecting a 911 special facility (as defined in (e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility, and they shall convey to that person all available information that may be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the effects of the outage on callers to that facility.

(3) Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the operator and/or provider shall submit electronically an Initial Communications Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage, the operator and/or provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission.

(4) The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.

(5) Excluded from these outage-reporting requirements are those satellites, satellite beams, inter-satellite links, MSS gateway earth stations, satellite networks, and transponders that are used exclusively for intra-corporate or intra-organizational private telecommunications networks, for the one-way distribution of video or audio programming, or for other non-covered services (that is, when they are never used to carry common carrier voice or paging communications).

(d)Signaling system 7. Signaling System 7 (SS7) providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that is manifested as the generation of at least 90,000 blocked calls based on real-time traffic data or at least 30,000 lost calls based on historic carried loads. In cases where a third-party SS7 provider cannot directly estimate the number of blocked calls, the third-party SS7 provider shall use 500,000 real-time lost MTP messages as a surrogate for 90,000 real-time blocked calls, or 167,000 lost MTP messages on a historical basis as a surrogate for 30,000 lost calls based on historic carried loads. Historic carried load data or the number of lost MTP messages on a historical basis shall be for the same day(s) of the week and the same time(s) of day as the outage, and for a time interval not older than 90 days preceding the onset of the outage. In situations where, for whatever reason, real-time and historic data are unavailable to the provider, even after a detailed investigation, the provider must determine the carried load based on data obtained in the time interval between the onset of the outage and the due date for the final report; this data must cover the same day of the week and the same time of day as the outage. If this cannot be done, for whatever reason, the outage must be reported. Justification that such data accurately estimates the traffic that would have been carried at the time of the outage had the outage not occurred must be available on request. Finally, whenever a pair of STPs serving any communications provider becomes isolated from a pair of interconnected STPs that serve any other communications provider, for at least 30 minutes duration, each of these communications providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering such outage. Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the provider(s) shall submit electronically an Initial Communications Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage, the provider(s) shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.

(e)Wireless. All wireless service providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration:

(1) Of a Mobile Switching Center (MSC);

(2) That potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of either telephony and associated data (2nd generation or lower) service or paging service;

(3) That affects at least 1,350 DS3 minutes;

(4) That potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5) other than airports through direct service facility agreements; or

(5) That potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in (e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility, and they shall convey to that person all available information that may be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the effects of the outage on callers to that facility. (DS3 minutes and user minutes are defined in paragraphs (d) and (e) of § 4.7.) In determining the number of users potentially affected by a failure of a switch, a concentration ratio of 8 shall be applied. For providers of paging service solely, however, the following outage criteria shall apply instead of those in paragraphs (b)(1) through (b)(3) of this section. Notification must be submitted if the failure of a switch for at least 30 minutes duration potentially affects at least 900,000 user-minutes. Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically an Initial Communications Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.

(f)Wireline. All wireline communications providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission within 120 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that:

(1) Potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of either telephony or paging;

(2) Affects at least 1,350 DS3 minutes;

(3) Potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in accordance with paragraphs (a) through (d) of § 4.5); or

(4) Potentially affects a 911 special facility (as defined in paragraph (e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been designated by the management of the affected 911 facility as the provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility, and the provider shall convey to that person all available information that may be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the effects of the outage on efforts to communicate with that facility. (DS3 minutes and user minutes are defined in paragraphs (d) and (e) of § 4.7.) Not later than 72 hours after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically an Initial Communications Outage Report to the Commission. Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification and the Initial and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.

(g) Interconnected VoIP Service Providers. (1) All interconnected VoIP service providers shall submit electronically a Notification to the Commission:

(i) Within 240 minutes of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration that potentially affects a 9-1-1 special facility (as defined in (e) of § 4.5), in which case they also shall notify, as soon as possible by telephone or other electronic means, any official who has been designated by the management of the affected 9-1-1 facility as the provider's contact person for communications outages at that facility, and the provider shall convey to that person all available information that may be useful to the management of the affected facility in mitigating the effects of the outage on efforts to communicate with that facility; or

(ii) Within 24 hours of discovering that they have experienced on any facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize, an outage of at least 30 minutes duration:

(A) That potentially affects at least 900,000 user minutes of interconnected VoIP service and results in complete loss of service; or

(B) That potentially affects any special offices and facilities (in accordance with paragraphs § 4.5(a) through (d)).

(2) Not later than thirty days after discovering the outage, the provider shall submit electronically a Final Communications Outage Report to the Commission. The Notification and Final reports shall comply with all of the requirements of § 4.11.

At 77 FR 25097, Apr. 27, 2012, § 4.9 was amended by adding paragraph (g). This paragraph contains information collection and recordkeeping requirements and will not become effective until approval has been given by the Office of Management and Budget.

Title 47 published on 2013-10-01

The following are only the Rules published in the Federal Register after the published date of Title 47.

For a complete list of all Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices view the Rulemaking tab.

In this document, the Commission announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved, for a period of three years, an information collection associated with the Commission's Report and Order, FCC 13-158, published at 79 FR 3123 on January 17, 2014, and at 79 FR 7589 on February 10, 2014. This document is consistent with the Report and Order, which stated that the Commission would publish a document in the Federal Register announcing OMB approval and the effective date of requirements subject to OMB approval. Specifically, this document announces the effective date of rules requiring Covered 911 Service Providers to notify Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and other “911 special facilities” of major disruptions in 911 service within time limits established by the Commission.

Effective February 18, 2014, except for the new or modified information collection requirements contained in § 12.4(c), (d)(1), and (d)(3), and § 4.9(h), which have not been approved by the Office of Management and Budget. The Federal Communications Commission will publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the effective date.

47 CFR Parts 4 and 12

Summary

The Federal Communications Commission (Commission) is correcting the effective date of a final rule that appeared in the Federal Register of January 17, 2014 (79 FR 3123). The document announced the effective date of rules requiring 911 communications providers to take reasonable measures to provide reliable service, as evidenced by an annual certification of conformance with specified best practices or reasonable alternative measures to mitigate the risk of failure. The document also announced the effective date of amendments to the Commission's existing rules requiring certain communications providers to notify public safety answering points (PSAPs) of disruptions in service.

Effective February 18, 2014 except for § 12.4(c) and (d)(1), which contain information collection requirements that have not been approved by Office of Management and Budget. The Federal Communications Commission will publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the effective date.

47 CFR Parts 0, 4, and 12

Summary

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) adopts rules to improve the reliability and resiliency of 911 communications networks nationwide by requiring that 911 service providers take “reasonable measures” to provide reliable 911 service. Providers subject to the rule can comply with the reasonable measures requirement by either implementing certain industry-backed “best practices” the Commission adopted, or by implementing alternative measures that are reasonably sufficient to ensure reliable 911 service. The FCC also requires 911 service providers to provide public safety answering points (PSAPs) with timely and actionable notification of 911 outages.

This is a list of United States Code sections, Statutes at Large, Public Laws, and Presidential Documents, which provide rulemaking authority for this CFR Part.

In this document, the Commission announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved, for a period of three years, an information collection associated with the Commission's Report and Order, FCC 13-158, published at 79 FR 3123 on January 17, 2014, and at 79 FR 7589 on February 10, 2014. This document is consistent with the Report and Order, which stated that the Commission would publish a document in the Federal Register announcing OMB approval and the effective date of requirements subject to OMB approval. Specifically, this document announces the effective date of rules requiring Covered 911 Service Providers to notify Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and other “911 special facilities” of major disruptions in 911 service within time limits established by the Commission.

Oppositions to the Petition must be filed on or before March 27, 2014. Replies to an opposition must be filed on or before April 7, 2014.

47 CFR Parts 0, 4, and 12

Summary

In this document, a Motion for Clarification or, In the Alternative, Petition for Partial Reconsideration (Petition) has been filed in the Commission's Rulemaking proceeding by Intrado, Inc., on behalf of itself and its affiliate, Intrado Communications, Inc.

Effective February 18, 2014, except for the new or modified information collection requirements contained in § 12.4(c), (d)(1), and (d)(3), and § 4.9(h), which have not been approved by the Office of Management and Budget. The Federal Communications Commission will publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the effective date.

47 CFR Parts 4 and 12

Summary

The Federal Communications Commission (Commission) is correcting the effective date of a final rule that appeared in the Federal Register of January 17, 2014 (79 FR 3123). The document announced the effective date of rules requiring 911 communications providers to take reasonable measures to provide reliable service, as evidenced by an annual certification of conformance with specified best practices or reasonable alternative measures to mitigate the risk of failure. The document also announced the effective date of amendments to the Commission's existing rules requiring certain communications providers to notify public safety answering points (PSAPs) of disruptions in service.

Effective February 18, 2014 except for § 12.4(c) and (d)(1), which contain information collection requirements that have not been approved by Office of Management and Budget. The Federal Communications Commission will publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the effective date.

47 CFR Parts 0, 4, and 12

Summary

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) adopts rules to improve the reliability and resiliency of 911 communications networks nationwide by requiring that 911 service providers take “reasonable measures” to provide reliable 911 service. Providers subject to the rule can comply with the reasonable measures requirement by either implementing certain industry-backed “best practices” the Commission adopted, or by implementing alternative measures that are reasonably sufficient to ensure reliable 911 service. The FCC also requires 911 service providers to provide public safety answering points (PSAPs) with timely and actionable notification of 911 outages.

Submit comments on or before January 17, 2014 and reply comments by February 18, 2014. Written comments on the Paperwork Reduction Act proposed information collection requirements must be submitted by the public, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and other interested parties on or before January 17, 2014.

47 CFR Part 4

Summary

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission seeks comment on measures to promote the resiliency and transparency of mobile wireless networks. This document considers and seeks comment on, among other measures, a requirement that mobile wireless network providers report for public disclosure on a daily basis during major disasters the percentages of their cell sites that are operational. This document also seeks comment on alternative informational disclosures and on other approaches to improving network resiliency.